


you're my kind, classic mind

by brahe



Series: say it like that [1]
Category: Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Genre: Academy Era, Bars, Drinking, Emotional Constipation, Getting Together, Heartbreak, Late Night Conversations, M/M, Pre-Canon, Pre-Relationship, Pre-Slash, Slow Burn, Starfleet Academy, eventually, i guess, leonard just wants to sleep, mentions of past relationships - Freeform, that also deals with the evolution of their friendship, there's probably some imagery here, this is an academy fic, troublemaker jim kirk
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-12
Updated: 2017-08-12
Packaged: 2018-12-14 15:02:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,050
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11785635
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/brahe/pseuds/brahe
Summary: A haze sits over the city when it gets this late, just like the haze exhaustion tends to leave on Leonard's overworked mind and the haze in the bars that Jim Kirk prefers to frequent. He always goes, always sits in the chair or the booth next to him and tries not to blind himself by looking to close at Kirk and the complicated issues he keeps bringing up in Leonard.Or, Leonard doesn't quite want to realize why he's always meeting Jim in the backs of bars after the sun's gone down, and he's fairly certain that most friendships aren't this rocky.





	you're my kind, classic mind

**Author's Note:**

> so this is the first part is a series that's heavily inspired by say it feat. tove lo by flume, i suggest listening to it (it's a great song, but it'll also set the mood for the fic)  
> I have a couple different headcanons of how that famous jim and bones relationship came around, and this is one of my ideas. they weren't really friends at first, but neither could stay away from each other, so they keep orbiting until something finally happens.  
> also, in this verse, leonard's divorce is still pretty fresh. this series will deal with those lingering emotions, the budding emotions between leonard and jim, and there's gonna a lot from jim's troubled childhood and his tendency to sleep around

 

 

It’s a cold night when it starts. When they start. The sky hangs low over the city, wisps of clouds clinging to the buildings, pressing a blue-tinged haze into the night.

Two months have gone by since the shuttle ride away from his problems, and into this completely new set of issues. Leonard hadn’t expected to make it more than a week or two when he disembarked in ‘Frisco, but he’s still here, and it’s starting to feel like he’s not going anywhere soon. Classes fill his mind during the day, and shifts at the Fleet’s med center occupy his nights.

There’s a stupid blonde and a bar that occupy his nights, too. 

That’s why he’s here now, walking into this place, more than halfway to dead on his feet after classes and medical, instead of back in his room, sleeping. It’s not a bar he would’ve chosen; the haze from the street outside seems to seep into the room, and it smells like beer and there’s sounds of a billiards game somewhere off in the din. He weaves through the bodies and the tables, finding his target easy enough. The kid is like a sun, bright and glowing and always so fucking _happy_  that it sometimes hurts Leonard’s eyes to look at him for too long.

“Bones!” he hears, and there it is, that godforsaken nickname, and that thousand watt smile, and he wonders why he’s here. A tumbler is pushed into his hands, burgundy liquid reflecting the lights from the ceiling. He takes a grateful sip and slides into the chair beside Kirk.

He’s silent for a while, longer than normal, and Leonard thinks that maybe he hasn’t made it as far into the bottle as usual, and he looks up to find Kirk’s stupidly electric blue gaze trained on him, like he’s another one of those physics problems he likes to do for fun at ungodly hours in the morning.

“What? Somethin’ on my face?” Leonard asks. Kirk tilts his head, a tiny frown creasing his forehead.

“You’ve got that look,” he says, like it answers the question. Leonard grunts.

“What look?”

“The one you get when you’re wondering.” He looks away, then, and it feels like it does when the sun disappears behind a cloud on a cold day. Kirk bumps his shoulder.

“So, whatchya wondering about, doc?”

“None of your damn business is what,” he says. Kirk laughs.

“Sure,” he agrees. He pours more whiskey into Leonard’s glass and lounges back in his chair like he’s in his living room, watching a holo.

Leonard swirls the drink around the glass and drinks half in one go. “Tryna get me drunk?” he asks, and Kirk smirks.

“Of course not,” he says. “I’m a gentleman."

“Right,” Leonard mutters, mostly to the whiskey, and settles into his chair with his arms crossed. He looks around the room, at the bodies pressed together on the makeshift dance floor, and the too-croweded bar top, and wonders why Kirk chose this place. Maybe it’s the anonymity of the place, the way everyone’s face seems to blur to this side of unrecognizable in the din. This isn’t the first time Leonard’s noticed how Kirk sequesters himself in a back corner, where he can watch everyone around them without being watched himself.

Leonard downs the rest of his glass and decides not to think too much about any of it.

The streets are still covered in a mist when they emerge from the bar later, much later, and the blue tint has begun to fade into an orange one with the coming sun. The temperature has dropped further since he arrived, and Leonard wishes his brought his jacket as they start picking their way back to the dorms.

Kirk walks silent behind him, sometimes looking up to blow air into the sky and watch the streetlights illuminate it. Leonard’s impressed with the mostly straight line he manages down the sidewalk. The kid drinks more than he does, something he’s noticed not for the first time, and there’s a thought about organ health, again not for the first time. But Leonard’s not about gossip, and what’s not his business ain’t his business.

They’re stopped at a light, waiting for the crossing, when Leonard feels that gaze on him again. It makes him feel like he’s caught under the microscope he so often finds Kirk above.

“You’re starin’ at me again,” Leonard says.

“I know.” 

“You gonna tell me why?” 

“None of your damn business,” Kirk repeats, and Leonard looks at him and sees that dumb smirk on his face. He huffs.

“Lighten up, old man,” Kirk says, and the light changes.

“Stop starin’ at me. It’s weird.”

“S’not that weird,” Kirk says.

“Yeah, it is.”

“Whatever you say,” he sighs.

It’s silent for a moment, but he can still feel Kirk watching him, and he knows the storm’s not blown over.

“Are you thinking about her?” Kirk asks, and Leonard almost stumbles.

“What?”

“Your ex-wife,” he says. Leonard stops walking and stares at the kid.

“I- no, I don’t believe I was,” he says, instead of the six questions he would rather say. Kirk hums. 

They walk the next block and a half in silence, before Leonard has to know. “That’s a pretty out-there guess,” he says by way of asking. Kirk shrugs, and looks at him out of the corner of his eye.

“Is it?”

God damn it, Leonard’s too tired to deal with this. He frowns, and thinks about whether or not to tell Kirk the truth.

“It’s you, actually,” he says, before he can change his mind. He flicks his gaze up from his feet to Kirk’s face, who’s smiling at the road ahead of them. Leonard kicks a rock into the street. “It always seems to be you."

That night he does think about Jocelyn, but the images of her are already beginning to fade, and bright white thoughts of James Kirk quickly outshine those of the life he left behind. He’s much too exhausted to think about why he always agrees to stay out till dawn with Starfleet’s Wonder Kid, or what it meant when Kirk turned to him with a smile more gentle than anything Leonard had seen from him yet with a _Likewise_  falling from his lips.

**Author's Note:**

> also news, i made a sideblog for my writing, catch me on tumblr at [brahewrites](https://brahewrites.tumblr.com)


End file.
